I'm an outlier here, but I'll chime in, in case there are other outliers hiding out there who'd like to know they are not alone. This is my opinion and as luck would have it, it matches with my child's opinion and disposition. Obviously others have vastly different opinions and I totally respect that and wish them best of luck at the next match!
I absolutely loathe all these academic competitions for young kids. For our family, the downside far outweighs the upside.
Even if a kid is in them for the pure joy of the subject (which is WHY a kid should be in them at this age), the joy is muted and the value is gutted by the people striving to vicariously win through their kids. And they are all over this stuff.
This is made worse by the furthering the idea that intellectual pursuits should be competitive. This despite all the evidence that meaningful academic achievements (e.g., novel research, inventions, ideas) almost always build on work done by and/or with others.
Fortunately for me, DS8 innately shares this opinion. Since before he could speak, he rejected dog-and-pony shows of any sort. "Do you know what 2+3 is" was met with stony silence, even though he darned well knew the answer. Though he is highly competitive, he considers academic competitions to be "silly and useless." His words, not mine - I've always been as neutral as possible, because i wouldn't want to stymie him if he WAS interested in this sort of competition.
So anyway - in case there are others wondering if they should push their kids into academic competions: we don't, and this is why. Again - your opinion may be totally different and I don't discount it.
